How to Gain and Grow Brand Equity

There is an elite tier in global brands, those households names which immediately spring to
mind. Dove, Nike, Netflix… these brands have not just created powerful economic models,
but they’ve also become a part of collective consciousness. Consumers know and trust their
products without question and are familiar with the values of these brands.

This hasn’t happened by accident. These brands have become so successful thanks to a
concerted effort to build brand equity. If you’re going to take your business to the next
level, brand equity needs to be an ingredient in your overall strategy. First, we’ll take a look
at what brand equity means before exploring how it has become so important in today’s
digital world – and finally, how you can build it for your brand.

What Is Brand Equity?

Brand equity has been getting bandied about in digital marketing circles for years, but as a
concept it might still seem obscure to you. Brand equity matters to your business, so let’s
figure out exactly what it means before moving on.

“Brand equity refers to the perceived value of a brand in the wider consumer consciousness
– it’s not an economic value per se, and it’s closer to the cultural relevance and resonance
that a brand has with the demographics it’s reaching out to,” says Jennifer R. Schermerhorn,
brand expert at Assignment Help and Revieweal. “Brand equity is birthed in the perceptions
that consumers have of your business and it’s bolstered by their experiences interacting
with your brand.“

Building brand equity creates a strong foundation for your business – let’s see why brand
equity matters.

Three Reasons Why Brand Equity Matters

Brand equity is an essential concept for building the relationship with your customers and
prospects. Let’s see exactly why growing brand equality should be a focus for your business.

1) Exponential Expansion

The exponential growth chart is pretty much the holy grail of every business and the
stronger your brand equity, the more opportunities your brand has for expansion in every
direction.

With good brand equity, your business has the opportunity to break into new markets at
lower costs and dramatically increase your revenue. A strong platform of brand equity will
mean that reaching out to new customers is cheaper and easier, because there will already
be a peripheral awareness of your business and its values. As you target new demographics,
they will quickly see the reputation your brand has and be brought on board.

WIth strong brand equity, new markets are prepped and ready for you to tap into. It creates
a platform for innovation within your brand and the potential for exponential expansion.

2) The Impact On Pricing Potential

The price that customers are willing to pray for your product reflects the value that they
perceive therein. But in the 21st century, customers are increasingly distanced from the raw
materials and R&D costs that have gone into creating, and the calculations they make about
the value of a product rely on the strength of the relationship they have with a brand as well
as broader perceptions about brand values.

Building brand equity has a direct impact on the price points you can apply to your products.
Brands that have strengthened brand equity will be able to charge more for similar products
than brands which lack that equity. By building brand equity you’ll see a direct impact on
your revenue thanks to stronger prices in the marketplace.

3) Strengthen Customer Retention

In marketing terms, it’s considerably more expensive to reach a new customer than it is to
sell a product to an existing customer. Your customers are your foundational market to
whom you can sell your products, and ensuring each of them returns to your products over
and over will give your business longevity as well as a platform for growth.

Brand equity is about building a relationship with your customers, expressing your
business’s story and ensuring that customers share your values. Brand equity means that
customers have a deeper attachment to your brand, and customer retention rates will be
strengthened.

The impact that brand equity can have on growth, pricing potential and customer loyalty
creates a recipe for business success. You’ll operate with greater strength in the
marketplace, increase revenue and reduce operating costs. Brand equity is essential to
businesses today. Let’s discover how to build brand equity as a means to success.

How To Build Brand Equity

Brand equity is essential to the longevity and success of businesses operating in the 21st
century. Now you know how important brand equity is, we can explore how to build it.

1) Establish A Strong Identity

The first step to building brand equity and a brand that connects with customers is to
generate a strong brand identity. This relies both on design and tone, and when these two
elements work in harmony a brand identity will emerge that’s immediately recognizable to
customers. This is the foundation of strong brand equity.

Design elements such as logo, typography and creative imagery in advertising is one
essential element of establishing your brand’s identity. Typography, for example, can
project a range of orientations towards professionality or, on the other hand, care-free fun.
Finding the right design for your brand and sticking to it is essential to your identity.
Your brand’s voice on its social platforms, email outreach as well as marketing campaigns is
equally important. Keep your voice consistent in order to demonstrate your brand’s values.
With a strong brand identity, it’s easy for customers to understand your brand and grow the
relationship of loyalty that brand equity promotes.

2) Tell Your Story

Telling the story of your brand is an important way to express your values and ensuring that
your customers know how your brand emerged from humble origins will reinforce brand
loyalty when it comes time to choose. It’s human nature to be drawn to well expressed
stories, and a good brand backstory will firmly implant itself into the minds of your
customers.

You can tell your story directly on your website – an About Us section provides an
opportunity to lay it all down for customers to take in. But your story can also be
intertwined with your social feeds. Most consumers aren’t going to take the time to read
your website, so your social channels offer an opportunity to interweave your values with
your backstory. The outcome? Customers that have a strong relationship with your brand.

3) Talk To Your Community

In order to build brand equity, you need a few things – brand identity and a brand story are
two of these. You also need to know how your brand is being received by the wider
community, a gauge of your current brand equity will give you a starting point for building it
in all directions.

Talking to your customers and prospects is a great way to understand your brand equity.
You can do this in a number of ways – by issuing automated feedback forms after customer
interactions or commissioning customer service personnel to proactively pursue
interactions. Often, you’ll need to incentivize responses at first, but the stronger your brand
equity is, the more your customers will be encouraged to enter into a dialogue.

4) Work On Customer Experience

Brand equity is, at its core, about the relationship you have with your customers. Customer
experience is fundamental to this relationship, so you should be doing everything you can to
invest in improving that experience. Customers should feel valued, responded to and as a
brand you should make it clear that your customers are your number one priority.

Pain points – places where customer interactions are getting snagged and creating negative
experiences, can be identified by a bit of research. It could even be the case that these pain
points are industry wide, in which case eliminating them for your customers will be a way to
take a step ahead of the competition in customer experience. There are selected points
where customers will interact with your brand – in marketing, purchasing and customer
service. Invest in these moments to make sure that every time you touch up against your
customers they’re positive experiences that reinforce and build your brand equity.

5) Equity Audits

Monitoring your brand equity to discover where it’s primarily being generated is essential to
the maintenance and advance of your businesses and its customer relations. This entails the
performance of regular marketing audits to see where you’re hitting home and where
you’re missing the mark entirely.

By bringing your recent marketing efforts together for appraisal, as well as exploring
customer responses to your outreach, your business will gain an understanding of how
brand equity is performing. Taking brand equity for granted is a huge mistake as your
business lives and dies based on customer responses to your brand.

6) Issue Brand Equity Reports

Taking your program for brand equity to the next level can have a huge impact on revenue.
For strong brand equity performance, everyone working within your business needs to be
on the same page with voice, tone and messaging. Conducting regular brand equity audits,
and issuing the results throughout your business, will ensure brand equity is at the forefront
of your business model.

A Brand Equity Report can reinforce your brand’s values and philosophy, explain how your
brand’s assets can be used and inform your personnel about brand equity performance.
Your brand’s assets include your identity as well as your social followings – these need
careful management to ensure consistent messaging.

7) Build Relationships And Trust

Brand equity is intimately connected to customer experience and the stronger the
relationship your customers have with your brand, the healthier your brand equity will be.
“Trust is integral to this relationship – customers need to see you demonstrate your values
and prove that customers can trust in quality and service from your brand,” says Willard H.
Garcia, marketing writer at State Of Writing and Essay Services. “With trust at the heart of
the relationships you and your customers are developing, your brand equity can only grow.”

8) Expand Brand Awareness

Brand awareness is the term used to refer to how well customers as well as prospects out of
direct reach know about your brand, and the products or services its offering. If you
strengthen brand awareness, reaching out to new customers and breaking into fresh
markets becomes simplified as well as cost effective as the prep work for your marketing
team is minimized.

Brand awareness also has a big impact on brand equity – as brand awareness grows there
will be increasing recognition in the marketplace about the value of your brand. Awareness
and trust are intricately linked as wider brand awareness demonstrates the social proof of
your brand – trust is reinforced because a wide range of users are invested in your brand.
Brand equity is subsequently strengthened.

9) Plan For The Future

You should never be satisfied with your brand equity as you can always reach more
customers, or strengthen the relationships with the customers you always have. Brand
equity can offer direction for your marketers however, acting as a link between past and
future outreach. Past marketing investments are manifested in brand equity, and the
strength of this will provide a direction for future strategies.

Wrapping Up

Everything a business does can either strengthen or diminish brand equity to varying
degrees, no matter how small or insignificant a choice it may be. The concept of brand
equity can, in this way, guide all your business decision making. Brand equity is so important
because it can offer new markets to expand into, enable higher price points for your
products as well as strengthen customer retention – each of these will have a huge impact
on revenue.

Growing brand equity is about building customer relations. Establishing brand identity,
awareness and increased customer trust will provide you with a great platform for brand
equity. Your business is a success story that deserves to be told – get out there and tell it.